


cold

by katotastic000



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Bullying, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, idk what brought me to this idea but i guess i should mention it, mention of abusive relationships, so taka still has to get comfortable with having friends, that's why they're not close yet, this is just full on vent and projecting don't @ me, this portrays taka's and mondo's friendship in its early stage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27882798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katotastic000/pseuds/katotastic000
Summary: Summer break brings the cold.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	cold

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago where I wasn't feeling so fresh and decided to finish it today, so the ending might seem a little rushed.

Underwear, socks, sarashi, undershirt, button-up, pants and belt, fourth of six holes, uniform jacket, five bottons stiffly closed, hung up the medals, fastened the epaulettes, tightened the armband and tied up the boots. And despite all these layers, Kiyotaka felt cold.

The world was a painting. Light brushes of yellow and white on a surface of hinted blue formed the summer sky. Red and green strokes, flat in their manner, made up the academy and its grounds. The hundred passing faces impressionisted in blurry motion, stretched by laughter and squeezed by goodbyes.

The world was a painting and Kiyotaka was standing in a gallery, staring at the insides of the frame. And he stared and stared and felt stupid. He was smart, he believed, he should understand. He had learned enough about symbolisms and metaphors that he should be capable to grasp the meaning and the intention. He was even able to hear the events that unfolded in the frame: students shouting, rolls of suitcases clacking on the asphalt, cars honking, the sound of summer break.

Summer break pierced his fingertips, entered his bloodstream, climbed up his arms, crawled into his heart and spread like a venom. Summer break made him freeze.

Summer break meant solitude to Kiyotaka. Summer break built a glass dome around his neighborhood that he could never escape. He could walk and walk and walk all day and then see an exit but then be reminded that he had to be home by six to prepare dinner for his father. Or his walk would be cut short by strange high school boys yelling "Oi, retard!" and chase him home. Or he'd notice that he has nowhere to go and no one to go to.

Summer break meant break of routine. No one watched and assessed him but they'd start doing it as soon as he was back, so he used his free time for studying. The morning was scheduled. Waking up at seven, light stretches, going for a run, feeling refreshed and ready to work and as soon as he did, he forgot to look up. The sky switched from orange to blue to grey to black without his attention, and for once, he looked up. His room was too dark to read. Keys jingled outside of thin walls and his father was home. His father never blamed him for not cooking, not cleaning, not finishing his books, not writing as neatly as he used to. Kiyotaka never told him how strictly he played that role himself.

Summer break meant pain. Nothing seemed to matter because all supervisors slumbered which suggested that he could sleep as well which suggested that he would waste precious time and do worse than ever. And that all things he did were just as meaningless.

The faces kept on passing by him and he couldn't make out his classmates in the weaving swarm. Kiyotaka wasn't exactly certain but he liked to imagine that they began to like him. His acquaintance with them was brief and mostly consisted of scolding and classroom discussions. They called him annoying, sighed and rolled their eyes when he opened his mouth but the wish that they were in on a joke he didn't get was so strong that it was almost convincing.

Honesty was a luxury when you were stamped "Ishimaru." Sincerity was a threat when you name was Kiyotaka and you were branded, the failures burnt into your skin and as soon as you put on your layers, the people heated their irons again. They burned through your clothes, marking you "weird", "obnoxious" and "pathetic", your skin freezed to counter the heat and it did neither worse nor better to your look if you carved in some words as well.

The swarm was moving and Kiyotaka shuddered every time one of them got caught on him. The splots of color were too vivid and bright and they swam in the motion and Kiyotaka's tears.

If he couldn't find him, summer break would hurt more than ever.

As close as it was to the truth, Kiyotaka hated the thought that Mondo was the person that mattered the most to him. To hierarchize was an insult to everyone who tried, who let him sit at their table at lunch, who asked him to walk to class together, who at least not branded him, who shrugged of his scolds without another word.

The feeling wasn't even mutual, Kiyotaka thought. Though Mondo wasn't popular with the girls at the academy, he was "one of the guys" and had something to say about nearly every single one of them, and so much more about the boys outside the academy. He led a gang and each day, he dropped a name Kiyotaka had not heard before.

Kiyotaka had known him for a year and had known him in a truer sense for two months. It felt like he had arrived only a moment ago and got in line at the last position. Kiyotaka began a note book to keep track of the mass of Mondo's friends. They all knew Mondo whether as a fragment, a frame or the whole picture, and Kiyotaka at the end of the line wasn't sure how much he saw.

Kiyotaka thought of himself as replacable and usable. Like a lightbulb you could switch on when it was too dark and switch off when it was bright enough. And most of all feelings, Kiyotaka was ashamed of himself. That he accused his friend of misuse of his person, that he was selfish enough to have that worry, that maybe this was how friendships worked, that hierarchy was normal and just another system Kiyotaka simply was incapable of understanding.

A soft vibration at his hip startled him. He had received a text message, the third one ever since he got this phone yesterday. He fumbled it out of his pocket. Cracked screen, the display barely readable, the ports scratched and the color of the frame rubbed off, in parts to unregcognition. A message from his father. He'd be twenty minutes late. Traffic. Kiyotaka chose not to respond. It would change nothing anyway.

The phone had been a gift from Mondo, a sort of hand-me-down, and it mattered just as much if it broke, if someone broke it, like the last.

Kiyotaka looked up. The swarm had vanished. He shivered. Twenty minutes. The breeze of summer was a cold one.


End file.
